Which PCI Express card?

R

rimmer

Geek
Hi everybody again! I finally resolved my previous problem, which turned out to be motherboard, however my new one is PCI E and my AGP Geforce 6600 went to my parents PC. I am now using built on geforce 6150 at 64MB shared with 512MB RAM, leaving me with 448MB. Obviously I want a propper card. This built on isnt bad though, it runs Need for speed carbon on low at 60-100 FPS and CS source at 50-60 on low.

My question is, which card would be best for this setup (please note I will be upgrading RAM to 2.5GB)

Athlon 64 3200+ Venice Stock 2GHz @ 2.5GHz
512MB DDR333 @ 332MHz effective
Gigabyte mATX board nFORCE 430 Business platform

I am prepared to pay a fairly high amount, but I don't want to buy a ridiculously mad card like a 8800 Ultra 768MB. Not only due to price, but because of CPu bottleneck.

Which card will my system make the most of without upgrading anything, apart from the RAM and possibly a little more overclock of the CPu if i find time.

And just so you all know, I like playing games, e.g. CS Source, BF2, FEAR, Quake 4, Need for Speed Carbon, preferable wanting to run them on high / highest settings at 1280x1024

Thanks in advance
 
8800GTS 320MB will do you fine for the moment, try get it for second hand, I think someone got one second hand for £100 once :o
 
well, i know higher end DX9 cards do better than anything less that the 8800 GTX, so i before you choose a card, do you plan on making a move to Vista anytime soon. That said, before i'd go that route, i'd just invest in a whole new system, so you might as well just get a Nvidia 7series card if you think you'll plan on going SLI, but otherwise, rate now i would say your best bet is ATI's X1950XT or X1950Pro, those cards are real sweet.
 
go buy a radeon hd2600xt gemini or 8600gts

i don't trust second hand anyway because people oc the card and damage it even if not damaged, the proper working time is decreased with too high heat

dx9 cards are good but new games will not programmed under dx9 shader modeling they will all use dx10 and it will be a dead investment spending money on x1950 or 7900 series cards
 
Those 2600XT's are not worth the money and perform worse than a 7900GS, X1950Pro etc...

The problem with the 2600 series is that sure they are DX10, but they wont be playing any DX10 games at good levels.

There only good cards at the moment to look for are:
X1950Pro
X1900XT 256MB
X1950XT 256MB
8800GTS 320MB

Out of those the 8800GTS is the best choice and is cheap, thrashes an X1950Pro/XT and is worth the money.

But as been said, you should upgrade your rig, you will be able to play most games maxed with your current rig and an 8800GTS 320, but for later on you really do need to upgrade, especially if you wish to play Crysis.
 
Right, well thanks for the suggestions, I will be having both Vista Ultimate x64 and XP Home 32 Bit, both on different hard drives and dual boot.

My conclusion is, that I should get a DX10 one, I like the look of the 8800GTS 320MB, because I read up on the 8600 and 8500 GPus and they are mainly for media purposes, video codecs and designed to reduce load on CPu, perfect for video editor, however I am, and always will be into games.

I think I should get an 8800GTS 320MB, brand new one as they are not too expensive and I am sure soon they will drop in price a little. 320MB of VRAM will be enough to run most new games at 1280x1024 and on higher settings won't it?

And is the 8800 GTS 320MB very big? because I do have limited space in my case, it is an ATX one, but slightly smaller than my previous one, both lengthways and is not as wide. A measurement would be nice :)

Cheers
 
The 8800GTS is the same length as an X1950Pro, something like 9.5" :)

You could always go for the 640MB 8800GTS for piece of mind, you just need a card to get you through to september though, then upgrade to G90, save up though, you'll need it ;)
 
hmmm well I would like my PC to be able to run stuff still in 2 years time, 3 if pushing it, before another majorly new pc
I just want a card that is decent and won't cause bottlenecks, in fact because I can't get DDR2, does anybody think I would benefit from 2GB of DDR 500MHz and is capable of 550 MHz and possibly a new athlon 64 x2 4400 ?
 
from what i've gathered, anything below the real top end cards aren't worth getting at all, because they don't perform, period. Unless its a 8800GT or 8800GTX, i don't think i'd even invest. Anything below those cards don't seem to run games well at all, and they are horrible at DX9 games. the HD 2900XTs don't seem to do so bad ether.
 
rimmer said:
hmmm well I would like my PC to be able to run stuff still in 2 years time, 3 if pushing it, before another majorly new pc
I just want a card that is decent and won't cause bottlenecks, in fact because I can't get DDR2, does anybody think I would benefit from 2GB of DDR 500MHz and is capable of 550 MHz and possibly a new athlon 64 x2 4400 ?
Click to expand...

Dont be upgrading that rig, its too old.

DDR is obsolete now basically and not worth the money, its not the card that will cause bottleneck, infact for an 8800GTS or GTX its your CPU thats going to be a bottleneck.
 
Does nobody think I should get a 7900GT? I know this computer is old, its 3 this october, but this September I will starting college as I have just left school, I won't be too bothered about reeeeaaal new games, won't be too arsed if dead new ones run on medium/low

I really can't be arsed saving for a new PC right now, maybe "09 come, and AMD and ATi bring out this new CPu and GPu on one chip, I may sink my teeth into something nice.

What I do basically want, is this system to run my games, and lots of general use things too at once, hence this 2GB of RAM I want. Also planning on having a Vista Ultimate x64 partition, I know, it may kill this PC a little but I have had it run nicely on 1GB of RAM and an AGP geforce 6600.

2GB of RAM
Geforce 7900GT 512MB

I can get both for fairly cheap, will this noticably boost games and reduce hard drive swapping and keep me in business until I can get out of college and start work?
 
rimmer said:
Does nobody think I should get a 7900GT? I know this computer is old, its 3 this october, but this September I will starting college as I have just left school, I won't be too bothered about reeeeaaal new games, won't be too arsed if dead new ones run on medium/low

I really can't be arsed saving for a new PC right now, maybe "09 come, and AMD and ATi bring out this new CPu and GPu on one chip, I may sink my teeth into something nice.

What I do basically want, is this system to run my games, and lots of general use things too at once, hence this 2GB of RAM I want. Also planning on having a Vista Ultimate x64 partition, I know, it may kill this PC a little but I have had it run nicely on 1GB of RAM and an AGP geforce 6600.

2GB of RAM
Geforce 7900GT 512MB

I can get both for fairly cheap, will this noticably boost games and reduce hard drive swapping and keep me in business until I can get out of college and start work?
Click to expand...

It'll boost your performance in games, but then again if you move to Vista you have a big drop in performance in games compared to Windows XP, infact I am seeing 10-15fps less in games with Windows Vista compared to Windows XP, so were I was running at 35 its not around 20, so lagging abit so you can see why Vista may cause some problems however the 165.15 drivers from NV apparently almost bring performance up to XP level but the problem with that is that NV pulled the drivers from NV's site.
 
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